A Social Networking Adoption Model for Communication and Collaboration in e‐Government
Kenneth Griggs and Rosemary Wild California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, USA griggs. ken @ gmail. com
Abstract: The use of social networking as a tool for information dissemination, collaboration, community creation, and feedback has proceeded at an extraordinary pace, yet no comprehensive adoption model for government organizations exists. Such a model is needed to help government organizations weigh the benefits and risks associated with the use of public( external) social networking applications( SNA’ s) and it would serve as a basis for the custom design of private( internal) social networking applications tailored to specific types of government organizations. Reliance on readily available SNA services such as Facebook and Twitter poses a number of challenges for government organizations related to privacy, security, and potential negative unintended consequences of their adoption. The intent of the model proposed in this paper is to assist in the development and use of custom SNA’ s with high value and low risk. We provide illustrations of each factor and its attributes as well as a discussion of how each can be viewed from an adoption perspective in a government setting. In addition, the paper contains commentary on tools used in social network research, an overview of the mathematical foundations of social network applications, and illustrative cases involving the use of SNA’ s at various levels of government accompanied by an evaluation relative to the proposed model.
Keywords: social networking, adoption model, social network mapping, risk model, collaboration
1. Introduction
The growth of the use of social networking applications( SNA’ s) within government has proceeded at a rapid pace. An online timeline entitled“ U. S. Federal Government use of Social Media” sponsored by the U. S. Government’ s General Services Administration illustrates the exponential explosion of the use of social media in government. The timeline begins in 2001 with a single entry for the launch of Wikipedia in January, 2001, continues with a single report of the live video streaming of the Whitehouse Easter Egg Roll for 2002, and finally lists ninety‐one separate significant social media initiatives by 2010 ‐ greater than one new initiative per week( The Center for Excellence in Digital Government, 2010). These initiatives involve a wide range of social network applications with various capabilities including text blogging( e. g., Blogger, Wordpress), microblogging( e. g., Twitter), Wikis( e. g., Mediawiki), social networks( e. g., Facebook), video messaging( e. g., YouTube), audio blogging( e. g., Platform Nation), photo sharing( e. g., Flickr), and a great many lesser‐known SNA’ s. Some government uses of social media, such as those that attempt to encourage citizen engagement via a dialogue with the government, lend themselves to publicly available tools such as Facebook and Twitter. However, many other government applications, both internally and externally, would benefit from custom‐designed private social networks that mitigate risks associated with publicly available social media tools.
In this paper, the term“ social networking” refers to computer‐mediated forms of social connection and the term“ computer” includes any appliance containing a computer processor such as a cell phone or a tablet device. A social networking application( SNA) is any technology that enables social networking. There are a number of definitions( D. M. Boyd and Ellison, 2007) for this type of“ social networking”( or a variation of the term) that have the following core attributes:
• The maintenance of public or private user profiles
• User defined access and connection sharability
• Connection traversal within or beyond a single network node
• The formation of relationships
A“ node” is defined as a network element capable of a connection and could consist of a web page, a text segment, an image, or anything that can be represented in digital form. Thus social networks, as with physical networks, can be viewed as a collection of connectable nodes. The evolution of social networking has been characterized by very rapid increases in system complexities that require a deeper analysis than physical networks. Government organizations are using social networking both internally and externally for a variety of reasons including to collaborate, create client relationships, manage service delivery, disseminate information,
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